Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Lorry Protest

Fuel Foolishness:While I queued this morning to renew my oyster, we where serenaded from the near by A2 by the air horns and sirens of protesting truckers, on their way to central London.It was annoying, which is the point I suppose. They are protesting about the rise in fuels bills. Their aim is to get the government to freeze or remove fuel duty so their costs don’t increase.

Now putting aside the fact that all special interest groups believe there grievances are vitally important I think their plan is misguided. As removing duty will just cause more price inflation as use and therefore demand goes up so that in few months they will back where they started with high prices.

One area where the government may be able to act is on the money markets. It seems from various news programmes that the price of oil has gone up partly through supply issues but also because that jolly breed, “speculators “ have driven up the price. So basically people betting on oil price increase have partly caused said increase.I’m not sure what governments can do about this but controls, taxes on profits on of speculators could be the way forwards .

But and you knew this was coming this and any other government will never stand up to city, the sound of air horns is annoying but they will fade Gordon and the boys are so in bed with the city that they won’t put their foot down even if the crowing city boys steal all the bed clothes, pillows, read in bed, snore and even have metaphorical threesome with their sister and wife. The fact that oil prices, house prices etc are all out of control down largely to uncontrolled unaccountable short term city gambling still hasn’t struck home to the Government and sadly probably never will.

Ps. I don’t in this case that fuel prices is green issue as we have no short term alternative, it should be used to drive longer term changes but in the short term it will have little effect.